* A 1940s Donald Duck comic featured Donald and his nephews raising a sunken ship they're trapped in with the air from ping pong balls. Not impressed? Well, [[http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/ in 1964]], a ship full of sheep coming into Kuwait sank, and everyone was worried about the decomposing sheep contaminating the drinking water. One man, wisely not mentioning where he got the idea, suggested using ping pong balls. [[LifeImitatesArt It worked!]]* Commanding a boat powered by ''[[EverythingsEvenWorseWithSharks sharks]]'' (''[[http://disneycomics.free.fr/Ducks/Barks/1950/W_OS_291-02R/08.jpg The Magic]][[http://disneycomics.free.fr/Ducks/Barks/1950/W_OS_291-02R/09.jpg Hourglass]])* In ''Truant Officer Donald'', Donald Duck outwits his nephews ''THRICE!'' The first one being where he effortlessly snatches them up the first time for playing hooky, the second one being him hiding in a snowma-err, snow''duck'', and when the boys tried to smash it too erase any evidence of their hooky day, Donald jumps out and catches them, and the third one being when it looks like the boys have won for besting Donald because it was Saturday and there were no school on Saturday, [[WhamLine Donald pulls out a key from his vest, says that it's the school's key,]] and forces his nephews to go in anyway and write out "Crime does not pay," 100 times each on the blackboard. When Donald smarts show, they ''SHOW!''* Near the end of "The Horseradish Story", the villainous Chisel [=McSue=] tries to toss the Ducks off their own raft. Donald proceeds to [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dgHT945_NS0/U679cOk_P4I/AAAAAAAAGJ4/ecum-J5QUdo/s1600/unclescrooge_003_23.jpg lead the entire Duck family on a beatdown of the guy.]]-->'''Donald''': Haven't we taken enough guff from this tough?-->'''Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie''': Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Creator/Don Rosa's Comics ]]

* Donald [[http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i212/Kerrah_photos/HolyGrailMotivator.jpg uses the Holy Grail to knock a villain unconscious]] in "A Letter From Home." ** Let's give this some thought. To render the week's BigBad unconscious via a blow to the head, that's spectacular in itself. Yet, Donald didn't use just any weapon. He was armed with the Holy Grail. Did you read that? Here it comes again just in case: DONALD DUCK USED ''-THE-'' '''HOLY GRAIL''' to knock a villain senseless, smashing it against his head with such strength that he BROKE IT. It may as well be the most sacrilegious, blasphemous, yet epically AWESOME KO ever featured on Disney Comics. * Little Donald giving 1930 Scrooge at his most {{Jerkass}} a much needed kick in the rear. (''The Empire Builder From Calisota'')* [[http://www.zocoi.com/books/176-scrooge-mcduck-the-treasury-of-croesus Telling off both Magica and Scrooge]] at the end of ''The Treasury of Croesus'', forever showing that while he may never be as rich or as powerful as either of them, he may just be the happier one.** Magica's dumbfounded expression and Scrooge's quivering, cane-breaking fury are just icing. Of course, this was perfectly in character for the Donald of the day (who was a hard-smoking, hard-drinking, sea-shanty-singing, {{Angrish}}-sputtering sailor followed by a trio of [[WiseBeyondTheirYears Junior Woodchuck]] nephews for whom this was a chance to show off more knowledge of history.)* His near-HeroicSacrifice in ''The Black Knight Glorps Again'': The plan to get the Omnisolve-covered Black Knight trapped in a diamond room succeeds. Unfortunately, Donald gets trapped with him, whom he threatens to kill if they don't release him. Just as Scrooge and the boys agree, Donald tells them not to open the door, no matter what, and struggles with the Knight until they both pass out from the Omnisolve dissolving the air in the room! ''Wow!'' Now ''that'' was smart, selfless, and brave.** For those of you who don't know: The Black Knight's armor is covered in a solution that disolves almost anything instantly at touch, including air. Even fired spears and cannonballs would simply dissapear into it as if he was a walking black hole. He's pretty much a less scary verision of SCP-106 without a pocket-dimension. And Donald was locked in a small room with someone who could kill him with a simple poke. Woah!* The climax of ''The Magnificent Seven (Minus Four) Caballeros''. The story's villain (a native chief turned greedy by civilization) escapes in a canoe, leaving Donald, José and Panchito in the lost city of Ophir, with no way to get out thanks to the river being infested with piranhas and the city's location on a high plateau. Things are looking grim, to the point where his friends lament this as the end of the Three Caballeros. As everything seems hopeless and their future looks doomed, Donald recalls the insults and mistreatment that Scrooge, Gladstone, and Daisy gave him earlier in that week, accusing him of being completely worthless and incapable of doing anything without screwing it up... all with his nephews seeing everything, feeling so very sorry for him. Donald finally '''snaps''', grabs a vine, swings into the chief's canoe, and proceeds to give him the beating of his life.** Donald's act of bravado inspires Panchito and José decide to join his friend. Just then, they notice a ''gigantic'' anaconda (which had previously attempted to eat Donald) swimming toward the canoe. Panchito ties the snake's tail to a nearby bridge, while Jose subdues it with only his umbrella. After the chief falls off an InevitableWaterfall, Panchito ties up the Anaconda by its neck and he, along with Donald and José, ''ride out of the ruins on it like a bucking bronco''. *** There's still a tribe of Indians they gotta deal with. It ends up not being necessary to do so, but their will to face them with their bare hands is still admirable.--->"A ''whole tribe'' of Indians against ''Three Caballeros''...We have them grossly '''outnumbered'''."*** And why was it unnecessary? Because their mounts - Panchito's horse Señor Martinez, [[ItMakesSenseInContext an ox and a llama]] - had already captured them. Señor Martinez was already awesome on his own, and the llama was TheCastShowoff, but this...** In this story, Donald replies to some of José and Panchito's comments and jokes by [[RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun mentioning he was involved in finding Eldorado, the lost mines of the Incas, Atlantis, and King Solomon's Mines, and found the last living dinosaurs, as an afterthought]]. He did all of that in other stories, but José and Panchito's awed reactions really put all of that into perspective.*** That's also part of why they attacked and tamed the giant anaconda: they had enough of Donald accidentally putting them to shame with both his {{Crazy Awesome}}ness and the humility to not mention his past adventures (he ''really'' didn't think much of it, but still...), and when he snapped...* Donald single-handedly assists Scrooge outwitting Beagle Boys in Inception-like adventure of "Dreams of a Lifetime"* In ''The Quest for Kalevala'', Scrooge and Donald meet face to face with ''[[TheGrimReaper Death himself]]'', and what does Donald do? ''[[CrazyAwesome Laughs into his face]]!'' It's [[UpToEleven one-upped]] in the epilogue [[NoExportForYou included in the Finnish hardcover edition]], where Donald literally [[RefugeInAudacity kicks Death's ass so hard that his skull flies off]] (This actually being payback from earlier, where Death threw them out of his realm for causing general havoc, and ended up literally kicking Donald out. This whole thing [[ItMakesSenseInContext Makes Sense in Context]]. Creator/DonRosa seemingly makes a lot of weird shit work in Disney comics.).

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Others' Comics ]]

* Future Donald does pretty awesome in the alternate future of Lars Jensen's story "Whatever Happened to Scrooge [=McDuck=]?", specifically by managing to bankrupt Flintheart Glomgold and John Rockerduck with fines by converting the part of Scrooge's empire he inherited (after Scrooge's mysterious disappearance) into a charity organization dedicated to stopping illegal and unfair deals and reporting them to the proper authorities.* C'mon, Donald is the kind of person who will carve a mountain into an effigy of Napoleon with a chainsaw, in a single night, just so that people will talk about him. This at least deserves a mention.* In a Italian story,after Uncle Scrooge goes missing, Donald and his nephews travel to an island to retrieve him. Said island is inhabited by big, strong ducks (like two times as tall and three times ad large as Donald). When they get in an ambush,one of them captures Donald... until he sees another trying to do the same to his nephews. He goes full [[PapaWolf uncle wolf]], beating the crap out of him and sending him crying away. They need a whole squad to subdue him.* Italian stories created Paperinik, a superhero persona for Donald. How is this awesome? Well, in the first story he acted as an avenger of himself, and the very first thing he did was to steal Scrooge's mattress ''while he slept on it''. After graduating from avenger of himself to superhero, he routinely took on what seemed to be impossible odds, and ''won every single time'' (just to make an example: one of his most frequent adversaries is Spectrus, a stage magician/GentlemanThief who can hypnotize everyone with a single look in the eyes, yet Paperinik can fight and defeat him with ''onion juice''). Then, there's ''PaperinikNewAdventures''...** Also, Paperinik never lost a fairly sadistic streak. The reason most of Duckburg's criminals run away when they hear ''springs'' is that Paperinik has spring-powered boots to [[InASingleBound jump very high]], and if he's patrolling in those and not on car is that he's bored. And when they don't (or can't) escape... Well, in one occasion the Beagle Boys managed to get all inhabitants of Duckburg out of town to sack the place undisturbed by using a marathon with Paperinik's secret identity as a prize to bait them, only for Paperinik (pissed for having been involved and getting a scare when they falsely claimed they knew his identity) to arrange them to get caught in the act by ''every single person in Duckburg''.** In a story Donald wanted a vacation, but he couldn't do it because there were too many criminals and too little cops. The solution: ''capturing every single criminal in Duckburg '''in a single night''''', and then going on his vacation.*** He did it ''again'' for a different reason: the billionaires of Duckburg wouldn't help refurbishing the sport field citing the expense of defending their fortunes from criminals as reason, so he captured them all. And did it even more awesomely than the first time: while the first time he ran around the city with his gadget and picked the criminals one by one, this time he used some AppliedPhlebotinum from Gyro to bait them all in a square, at which point he ''caught them all in a net'' and called the cops.** In one story the Beagle Boys had managed to steal his car and gadgets, and tried to use them for heists. First heist: Paperinik wrecks the car's flying ability and recovers the loot. Second heist: he wrecks ''the car'' and recovers the loot ''and'' the wrecked car. Third heist, in which the Beagle Boys use his paralyzer gun and his [[InASingleBound spring boots for high jumps]]: he tricks the BB with the boots into jumping in the sewers, where he knocks himself out by hitting the ceiling with the rebound of the springs, then gleefully announces the other Beagle Boys that his gun is ''single shot'' and they have no reloads, and when they, furious for being ridiculed this way, jump on him to beat him to a pulp, he ''dodges and let them beat each other into unconsciousness'' while he calls the police and recovers the rest of his gadgets. And all of this using only improvised equipment like a foot-propelled scooter (when he wrecked the car's flying ability), a rope (when he wrecked the car) and a movable advertising poster (to trick the BB into jumping in the sewers).** In his fourth story Paperinik finds out everybody believes him to be a robot Scrooge created to advertise his wax museum (Scrooge ''had'' used a Paperinik robot to advertise that museum in the previous Paperinik story, but that was using Paperinik's own infamy, [[InsaneTrollLogic and from that a group of scientists determinated Paperinik was the robot all along]]). How does he reveal once and for all that he's not a robot? Easy: he ''crashes a party attended by the whole of Duckburg'' while Scrooge is in jail for a theft Paperinik had committed earlier in the story (in fact Rockerduck had thrown the party to celebrate Scrooge getting jailed), terrifies everyone with a ray gun ''made of chocolate'', gets the judge to admit he's not a robot and that Scrooge is innocent, commits the theft again with nobody daring to stop him, [[KickTheSonOfABitch kicks Gladstone in the pool for celebrating the jailing of a relative]], and, before leaving, forces Rockerduck to eat the gun.*** The threat with a fake gun is a RunningGag, usually in the form of a super soaker loaded with a soft drink that he'll shoot in his own mouth after he doesn't need to threaten the victim anymore (the victim is ''never'' amused). In one occasion he was feeling particularly sadistic, he used ''two'' of these guns to shoot Scrooge, the first with the drink sold as a paralyzing fluid to stop him from escaping and the other sold as a truth serum, and Scrooge was so terrified he fell for ''both''.** In one occasion Paperinik was trying to track down the man controlling the crime in Duckburg, but no thief would give him even an hint. How did he finally track him down? He faked an amnesy and a FaceHeelTurn and ''stole away half the city'' until the crime boss bought it and told his men to bring Paperinik to him to steal his loot. Needless to say, when they did he proceeded to ''[[CurbStompBattle beat up and capture every single criminal in the building]]''.* In the story "The Golden Christmas Tree", a witch - stereotypical warts, broom and all - lures away and kidnaps the triplets, and Donald follows their trail despite not having the advantages the witch gave the kids (like transforming into a log to let them cross a chasm, which Donald just throws a gigantic snowball across to make a bridge). Upon reaching her cabin, he assaults it ferociously, even after she proves she's a powerful RealityWarper who could kill him in a second and probably doesn't only out of some sadistic mischievous streak. After some quite impressive antics (including picking up an entire tree trunk to use as a battering ram) he cleverly enters through the chimney, gives a BondOneLiner, and uses ''her own broom'', which is the source of her power, to defeat her while yelling at his nephews to run as fast as they can.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Classic Disney Shorts ]]

* In "Bellboy Donald", the duck spends an entire short being forced to keep his temper under control by his boss with the threat of unemployment if he lashes at one more customer, with [[BrattyHalfPint Pete's malicious son]] constantly exploiting this and placing Donald in all sorts of humiliating situations. Finally, after being pushed too far, he drags Pete Jr kicking and screaming over to the hotel reception and inquires whether he has been fired yet, which the manager immediately confirms, at which point Donald happily gives the brat a much needed spanking, complete with an EvilLaugh. [[ValuesDissonance Even in this day and age]], his revenge is immensely satisfying.* "Lighthouse Keeping" has what has to be the most CrazyAwesome Donald has done. When trying to throw a pelican out of the lighthouse, it pulls the old "make you throw yourself over" trick. Donald falls, but as the Pelican smugly dusts his hands/wings off we don't hear a splash. Instead, Donald rides A WAVE BACK ONTO THE RAIL standing still, with a BadassArmFold and DeathGlare on his face. He doesn't move for a second before dusting his own hands off. This sends the pelican running back inside.** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5_qS9kcXog It's three minutes in.]]** In addition, rather than closing with Donald's traditional HumiliationConga at the hands of his foe, the short is left at a stalemate, as the sun rises and makes their feud pointless. Donald merely puts down all the shades to the building and ''forces the battle to continue''.* Sea Scouts (1939): [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3zJZ1P-wg4 Donald Punches out a shark]] after it wrecks his [[NiceHat nice captain's hat.]] '''HE PUNCHES OUT A SHARK.'''* In ''Alpine Climbers'' (1936), Donald headbutts a mountain goat and ''wins''.* His FaceDeathWithDignity moment in "Commando Duck". Even better is that he survived and washed out a Japanesse air fleet.* "Flying Jalopy" has Donald conned by evil salesman Ben Buzzard into buying a delapidated plane, that is secretly ensured in Ben's favor should it crash. Ben spends the entire short secretly trying to sabotage his flight, only for Donald to improvise with air tricks as the plane falls apart. When Ben finally loses patience and outright attacks Donald, [[LetsGetDangerous the war is on]], culminating in Donald using Ben himself as a makeshift plane.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: House Of Mouse ]]

* In "Donald's Pumbaa Prank", Donald rescues Pumbaa when Pete's stuffed him in the club's vent and is feeding him stinkbugs. Then, when it looks like Pumbaa's about to let loose a big fart and everyone has to evacuate, Donald bravely rushes out of the house with Pumbaa and takes the blow for everyone.** And the reason Donald rescued Pumbaa from Pete was all because [[spoiler: he felt guilty for about to be pulling a prank on Mickey, when he thought Mickey was going to set him up for another prank. Turns out Mickey wanted to give Donald a gold statue, which Mickey believed Donald truly deserved. In fact, it was Donald's fault in the first place when he got manipulated by Pete to kidnap Pumbaa.]]*** Actually, Donald was manipulated by Pete because although Donald first pranked Mickey by making him slip, Mickey had to take his so-called prank UpToEleven by not just showing an embarassing black and white screen test of Donald (even though unlike Mickey and the rest of his gang, Donald actually made his debut in color!), but even called his [[WithFriendsLikeThese supposed best friend]] an [[TheUglyDuckling "Ugly Duckling!"]] Given that in a cartoon in that episode, Mickey was the type of person to trick his years long girlfriend, Minnie, into thinking he was about to ''propose'' to her! ... Donald's suspicion was sort of justified. * "Everybody Loves Mickey" has a scene where Mortimer is doing an open-mic performance that consists of him saying nasty things about Mickey. Donald, who up to this point had been resentful of the apparent notion that everyone liked Mickey more than him, steps up on stage, tells the big rat "You can't talk about Mickey Mouse that way!", and then throws him off the stage. Needless to say, he pretty much deserved the applause he got for that.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: [[Series/Walt Disney Presents Disneyland TV Series ]]]]* The episode ''This is Your Life, Donald Duck'' has the scene where Donald (with help from Delores the Elephant) [[TeamRocketWins manages to get revenge on Chip and Dale]].